The Daily Startup: Marc Benioff Joins $35M Round for PernixData

As chips, software and memory become more powerful, servers are usurping some of the functions of storage arrays. That change has created pressure on big tech vendors like EMC and new opportunities for startups. One of these newcomers is PernixData, a startup led by two former VMware executives that has raised $35 million at a valuation of more than $240 million, reports Deborah Gage for VentureWire. The Series C round was led by Menlo Ventures and includes Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others.

ALSO IN TODAY’S VENTUREWIRE (subscription required):

Mati Kochavi, who built his security company AGT International into a $1.3 billion business, has now launched a venture capital fund that will back startups in the connected-devices and analytics sectors, as well as in news media, Yuliya Chernova reports for VentureWire. Moonscape Ventures has $120 million at its disposal, funded by AGT.

OrderUp, a startup that lets users browse menus and order delivery or takeout online, and helps restaurants set up a delivery service if they don’t have one of their own, has raised $7 million in Series A funding.

Dermira, which is working to bring a potential plaque psoriasis treatment to market, has raised $51 million in Series C funding to advance this product and a series of earlier-stage dermatology therapies.

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ELSEWHERE AROUND THE WEB:

News and Ads to Debut on Snapchat. The mobile app that creates vanishing messages has held talks with advertisers and media companies in recent weeks about a service called Snapchat Discovery that would show content and ads to Snapchat users, report the WSJ’s Gillian Tan, Douglas MacMillan and Jack Marshall. The product would let users read daily editions of publications as well as watch video clips of TV shows or movies by holding down a finger on the screen, like they do with photos and other messages on the app before disappearing. The offering could provide the three-year-old startup with its first revenue and demonstrate its potential value to investors.

Lyft COO Leaves. Travis VanderZandenhas left his job at Lyft after some level of tension with its founders, re/code’s Kara Swisher reports. Sources said the exec, who came to the ride-sharing company after it acquired his on-demand car wash service Cherry last year, was not the right fit for the company. VanderZanden, who is Yammer’s former chief revenue officer, tweeted about it.

SpaceX Raising Funding? The commercial space transportation startup founded by Elon Muskis raising investment that values the company somewhere south of $10 billion, TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden and Jonathan Shieber reported, in a deal that is said to include a large secondary investment in the region of $200 million…SpaceX denied the story to re/code.

Mass Layoffs Hit Intellectual Ventures’ Patent Factory. The company Silicon Valley loves to despise is laying off about 20 percent of its employees, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance reported. Intellectual Ventures has been employing 700 people, which means about 140 will be let go. IV was founded in 2000 by a couple of ex-Microsoft higher-ups who set out to buy patents—tens of thousands of them—and then turn that intellectual property into a multibillion-dollar venture.

For Billion-Dollar Companies, Venture Deals Outstrip Going Public. In the widest gap on record, private financing rounds that valued U.S. venture-backed companies at $1 billion or more were four times as common through the first half of this year as initial public offerings where market capitalizations reached that threshold, Yuliya Chernova reports, according to a VentureWire analysis.

Y Combinator’s Demo Day Has a New Twist. Included in the class of 75 startups at Y Combinator’s Demo Day were several startups from industries foreign to YC classes of days past: nuclear energy and biotech. That has new YC President Sam Altman’s fingerprints all over it, reports re/code’s Kurt Wagner…Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and Hall of Famer Joe Montana, an active angel investor with equity in multiple YC startups from each class since 2012, talked to re/code and dropped a Silicon-Valley-is-a-small-world tidbit: Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone used to coach his kids in baseball.

Georgia, Where The Crowdfunding Is Easy. One of several startups that crowdfunds investments in real estate has raised seed funding and moved its headquarters to Atlanta because Georgia allows state residents to invest in crowdfunded projects even when they’re not considered accredited investors by the SEC, the WSJ’s Deborah Gage reports.

Early ‘Unicorn’ Employees Can’t Always Cash In. Employees hoping to sell some of their stock when leaving a startup as a way to defray IRS penalties for exercising stock options are having a harder time now that some highly valued companies are restricting such sales, reports Fortune’s Dan Primack.

Delivery Startups—Is This 1999? Can the new breed of delivery startups succeed where the last crop (Kozmo, Webvan) so famously failed? The New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller talks to observers, including investors who think this time is really different. “The reason it is such a good idea now is the exact same reason it was so horrible before–the network effect,” said Nabeel Hyatt, a venture partner at Spark Capital.

How to Position Your Startup. Former Google and Square marketing executive Arielle Jackson tells First Round Review it’s crucial for entrepreneurs to figure out their startup’s “positioning,” and it all starts with four words: For, Who, That and Unlike.

The Wonder of San Francisco Startup Parties. A private launch party for Rumpl, a Kickstarter-funded startup that makes blankets out of sleeping bag material, was like many such parties in San Francisco these days–magical and absurd in equal measure, writes Valleywag’s Nitasha Tiku.

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Produced by the editors of Dow Jones VentureWire, Venture Capital Dispatch tracks the fast-moving developments at the intersection of high-tech innovation and venture capital finance. Featuring the VentureWire reporting team in the Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and Shanghai tech centers, Venture Capital Dispatch provides insight into the newest start-ups and latest trends in venture capital investing. Write us at VCdispatch@dowjones.com. For more information on Dow Jones products covering venture capital and other financial markets, go to http://pevc.dowjones.com.